Attempts at establishing a community between professors and students may be stymied by Tufts' metro location, limited gathering space, and the busy schedules of professors, Tufts faculty members told Tufts deans.
"There is a problem on campus in creating community where you get a natural gathering of students, faculty, and staff," Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman said. "And ideally, if we could do that, it would benefit the overall experience and also the melding of the curricular and the co-curricular agenda."
Faculty and administration think that the more faculty participate in on-campus events, the stronger the community can become.
Reitman hopes that programs such as the Faculty Forum started last year by Dean of Arts and Sciences Robert Sternberg, the annual themed EPIIC international relations symposium, town meetings, community conversations, and the recently established community barbeque will bring faculty into campus life outside the classroom.
"There's an increasing amount of drawing people together in various formats and
groupings," Reitman said. "The fact that we have a new space to do that in Sophia Gordon helps a lot."
But Tufts still lacks adequate gathering spaces, Reitman said.
"We have a paucity of places to play," he said. "That's one of the reasons why the community conversation about social life had so much conversation about the Hotung Pub and trying to make the Campus Center more involved in social life. It isn't what it used to be, and it could be.
"We need more gathering spaces that would get people together," Reitman said. "It's hard because we're a little land-locked."
Reitman said that the majority of buildings on campus are dorms, classrooms, and fraternities - in short, few social spaces for faculty and students.
"When we do Winter Bash, we have 3,000 people in the Gantcher Center," Dean Reitman said. "When we do a large Dewick event, we can get 350 people in, which is about seven percent of the enrollment. Is that okay? No."
The 2002-2003 Task Force on the Undergraduate Experience evaluated Tufts' community-building through interviews with different groups of faculty and students, Reitman said.
Dean of Undergraduate Education James Glaser said that Tufts' large number of commuting faculty make the task difficult. Due to long commute times, students rarely see their instructors outside of the classroom or office hours.
"The Boston metro area is large, and faculty [members] live all over," Glaser wrote in an e-mail. "It poses an additional roadblock to the development of community here."
Janet Schmalfeldt, an Associate Professor in the Music Department who lives in Arlington, said that, for her, living close to campus is an important part of participating in the Tufts community.
"For as long as I continue to teach at Tufts, I'll want to remain living this close to campus," she said. "It's important to me that I can get there quickly for classes, concerts, student appointments, faculty meetings, and other university events."
Emma Blake, an assistant professor in the classics department, agreed that living close to campus contributes to feeling part of the community, though it does not necessarily enable her to attend more events given her personal schedule.
"This arrangement makes me feel more a part of Tufts, although this rarely translates into structured participation in formal Tufts events," she said. "I am so busy that I rarely have time to participate in cultural events that aren't directly related to my work."
Reitman said that, at Tufts, faculty and staff tend to live farther away from campus because of the allure of Boston's diverse cultural and intellectual offerings.
"I think it's problematic that, unlike Middlebury or Colby, where an awful lot of the social and cultural offerings for faculty and staff are at the college, one of the attractions of Tufts is that we're adjacent to one of the most culturally rich cities in the country," he said. "So people want to take advantage of that."
But professors with children may not have the time to be involved in campus life outside the classroom. Psychology professor Holly Taylor, who now lives in New Hampshire and has a two-hour commute to Tufts, lived a short distance from campus until this past spring.
"Even when I [lived in Arlington], my challenge in doing the stuff outside wasn't related to the distance; it was related to having children," she said.
Some professors who do live nearby have actively tried to improve their relationships with students.
Taylor, Mathematics Professor Eric Todd Quinto, Associate History Professor Jeanne Penvenne, and Classics Professor Susan Setnik have had students to their homes for dinner and discussion.
But not all agree with this approach.
Schmalfeldt, on the other hand, tries to minimize social contact with students to maintain an appropriate professional distance, outside of an annual Music Department party that she hosts.
She said that she would never "consider going out for drinks with a student," but "I've shared lunch and coffee with the occasional advisee who has invited me to do so.
"I sense that my role as a teacher can be most effective if I allow my domestic life to remain more or less private," she said.
Setnik, however, said that meaningful relationships between student and faculty stem from a commitment that extends beyond GPA and advice about a major.
"The students who have maintained relationships with me even after graduation have been the ones who have shared their life goals with me, sometimes the ones who ask me for a series of recommendations throughout the years," she said.
Taylor agreed that one-on-one interaction is very important in helping students feel connected to their professors.
"I notice that very few students come to office hours and seek out further discussion," she said. "If there's some way to promote that, I think that would be the beginning step for building more community."
Reitman said that the Spirit Funds, which fund lunches between faculty and students, are very well utilized. He added that Dean Glaser's office offers free beverages to any faculty and student combination that goes to the Tower Caf?©. Last year, there were 84,000 transactions, he said.
"If faculty members ask for the funds to do a conversation over a meal, we'll be there for them," Reitman said.
For Reitman, concerns about a busy family and professional life are not specific to Tufts. "The technology has made it worse," he said. "The immediacy of communications such as e-mail keeps you constantly busy, and that affects students as much as it affects everyone else. Everyone's feeling frenzied."
